Can a soul inhabit a living robot? Would it be human?

[Nightrain]

In January of 2008, it was reported that researchers from University of Minnesota took a heart, cleaned it of everything leaving only the cartilage. Then, they sprayed it with stem cells from a mouse. Those stem cells self-organized, and the heart started to beat. That story is in this article from Science Daily.

At Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine they've been also able to grow ears for injured soldiers, a trachea for a woman who had TB, bladders for nine women who are able to walk around Boston without a bag; and they're working on developing organ parts of living cells that will help repair a person's hearing and sight -- all with stem cells that are derived from any part of our existing bodies. As one person put it, "Life happens!".

Eventually, it seems that it might be possible to put an entire human together and, conceivably, it could start to live. What personality would such a person have? What thoughts?

We are used to thinking that creating a live being is strictly the work of God or some intelligent creative process of nature, in which we have no business being involved.

But, after reading numerous accounts suggesting that the soul of a fetus hangs around and jumps into the body at birth to be reincarnated; one is given cause to wonder, if the living organism is really nothing more than just a living machine, which is meant only to be a host for one's soul. Without the soul is the physical body no more possessed of consciousness or intelligence than an automobile without a driver.

Is it time to consider a new paradigm, in which life must be redefined? Or, should we consider that the sacred "breath of life" is carried as an inviolate seed through the stem cells, and that our technology is not creating life, but merely only manipulating it?

What are your thoughts regarding these developments? Do you feel that reincarnation will be easier to accept in view of what is happening? Or, will it become more complicated and difficult to explain?

 

[Florence]

My Goodness John ...You do come up with some interesting thoughts.


As I said in another thread, I have always talked of future events ...not very many past happenings.


As a teenager 60 years ago, I told all of my friends that"before I die they will find a way to grow new arms and legs on people" I also pronounced that "If I could think the right thought or hold my breath, I could float right up into the air...I just know it's possible"


Well, I guess these things are coming to pass but when you speak of taking a heart and spraying it with cells from a mouse....what happens if that heart were put into a human body ?? Does cell memory come into play.??


It's one thing to taken YOUR cells and give them back to you to grow an ear but how do you grow a whole body.?.. Do you use a combination of cells from all knds of living things? Again we come to cell memory which has been written about more than once.


A soul has a choice as to what body to inhabit. Do you think a soul would benefit from that kind of choice.


If you made such a body....how would we even know if it had a soul or not. I don't think I like the idea of a body running around that has no soul to help guide it. It would just be a machine with skin etc.


I actually don't believe it would work. A beating heart is not the breath of life...."Spirit". I don't think a soul would enter a body devoid of Spirit. That's just my opinion....


.

 

[Sunniva]

Well, we've seen it happen in Terminator, right!? :laugh:


My opinion is that it depends on how you perceive the 'creation' of the soul. Personally I am inclined to believe that we create it ourselves - that our consciousness is actually our 'soul'. So if we 'grow' a living being to the extend that it is able to create a consciousness (i.e. a functioning brain) it would also create a soul that could reincarnate.


I don't really like to talk about 'the soul', because I think the term is so steeped in religion and it would be interesting to look at the phenomena outside a religious context. As a matter of fact I often think that discussions of 'the soul' are limited because of the religious connotations. I'm digressing though.


Back to your question:

Do you feel that reincarnation will be easier to accept in view of what is happening? Or, will it become more complicated and difficult to explain?

I personally think it would be easier to explain. At this time many people can't believe in reincarnation, because for them it equals believing in a religion. If 'the soul' or 'spirit' is created by ourselves then we can practically take away the factor of religion and make reincarnation more believable to many people. Obviously we would still have to explain what exactly it is that reincarnates and where the memories are stored, but I think that would be a question of research. An analogy could be the research of dreaming, which has come a long way during the past 100 years due to a serious focus. Today we know why we dream and what part of the brain that makes us dream, but many questions are unanswered and the subconscious remains a rather shadowy entity. Yet dreaming is an accepted part of human life and no one would ever question the fact that people dream. One can only hope that the same will be true for reincarnation in a 100 years, in my opinion.

 

[fiziwig]

Many years ago, somewhere around 1980 as I recall, I wrote a science fiction short story about that. (no, it was never published. I wrote it for fun.) A brilliant but aging computer scientist is working on a project to create the most advanced artificial intelligent computer. But before he could complete the project, he drops dead in the lab. His colleague are then shocked to discover his consciousness now resides in the machine he created.


I've always thought that if a computer were capable of supporting the same kind of processes the brain support, that our soul could take up residence there as easily as in a human brain.


Obviously our soul is our consciousness, but we must need the human brain for something or we wouldn't keep finding ourselves back inside one.

 

[Nightrain]

Obviously our soul is our consciousness, but we must need the human brain for something or we wouldn't keep finding ourselves back inside one.

Hi Fiz! Great to see you back! I missed your insight!


The more I read science news lately, the more it seems possible that living tissue may somehow be added to man-made computer circuitry and have it take over the thinking operations that we presently apply to computers. Indeed, the human brain is far more complex than any computer we could imagine; but the eventuality of living robots may not be far off. However, a robot whose brain can at least equal a human brain is probably much farther off into our future, if our species has a future that far ahead.


In such a case, I would imagine that the "birth" of such a living machine in the laboratory wouldn't be much different than the birth of a human being. The next question would be; What soul would want to inhabit such a host?


If we believe that some transplanted organs, such as the heart, carry with them some of the personality of the donor; it seems that there may be some aspect of life that an artificial organ could not possess. Thus, perhaps, an artificial body (robot) would still be nothing more than a machine without a soul.


On the other hand, it seems, that it would still be theoretically possible for a human to have artificial organs without losing one's personality. Yet, to build a robot from living tissue and have it be sentient seems theoretically impossible -- at least for the next 10,000 years.

 

[fiziwig]

I drop in from time to time, but I should drop in more often. Now that I'm retired my huge collection of hobbies keeps me very busy!


For as long as I can remember I've been interested in artificial intelligence. I started designing my first "robot brain" when I was about 10 years old (around 1955!) Of course I knew nothing about the subject back then, but I had an active imagination. Many years later after a Masters degree in computer science and a dozen years in the field I began to realize that the task was hopelessly complex, and probably beyond our capabilities for centuries to come.


But I keep going back to my high school thought experiment of 1961. Suppose a transistor (integrated circuits hadn't been invented yet) were invented that performed all the functions of a human nerve cell. It doesn't seem so far fetched that we could duplicate the function of one simple neuron.


Now suppose that one by one, each time a brain cell died (supposedly we lose millions of them every day) we replaced that one single cell with our special transistor. Eventually, each and every neuron in our brain would have been replaced by a transistor duplicating the functioning of that neuron.


Are we still human?


If not, when did we cease to be human? With the 99th implanted transistor? with the 9,000,000th implanted transistor?


I can't see how we would ever cease being exactly who we were to begin with, even after every neuron in our brain was replaced with a transistor.


I believe our souls, our consciousness, working from that other place (the astral plane, the spiritual plane, whatever you want to call it) spent millions of years guiding and steering evolution to coax biology into building a meat brain we could use. Only now we have the capability to go beyond meat brains. Maybe this is what we've been aiming for all along; the ability to build an immortal brain and body we could inhabit in the physical plane.


Who knows?


Certainly not me!